Overthewire Bandit level 4,5 walkthrough

Complete solution and explanation for bandit levels 4 and 5

Level 4 → Level 5

login : ssh bandit4@bandit.labs.overthewire.org -p 2220

the password is stored in a human-readable file in the inhere directory

• let’s cd inhere into the directory and see the contents of the directory using the ls command
• to find the human-readable file, we can use the command file this is used to determine the file type (please use the man pages man file, or google to learn more about it.)
• now executing man ./-file00 man ./-file01 is very time consuming, so
• let’s do file ./-file* , this command returns the file types of all the files in the directory starting with -file and ending with a sequence of strings (we use * )

• -file07, returned ASCII, i.e. human-readable text,
• now we can use cat ./-file07 To get the password!

Level 5 → Level 6

The password is stored in a file under the inhere directory which is: - human-readable - 1033 bytes in size - not executable

• let’s cd into the inhere directory, and list and contents. We find many directories and searching through each directory manually will be cumbersome and not the best way.
• so let’s use the find command.
• let’s try find -size 1033c ! -executable
• here -size specifies the size to find, where c is used for bytes
• -executable is used to find for files that are executable so we add a ! → ! -executable to tell, not executable
• do read the man pages man find to find out more

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